As requested by Frank, here are the working parts of my earlier Downgrading a MySQL schema from 5 to 4 article.

The Problem

To recap, I received a MySQL Version 5.0 schema via a sql file, however I was unable to upgrade from MySQL 4.0 to MySQL 5.0 on my old RedHat 7.3 production server. As an interim solution, I still wanted the schema and data to allow for initial development (without the 5 specific features including Views,Triggers and Procedures/Functions). However the MySQL 5.0 SQL file would not run in MySQL 4.0.

Sample

Here is a small subset of the MySQL Sakila Sample Database schema to demonstrate the problem.

DROP SCHEMA IF EXISTS sakila;
CREATE SCHEMA sakila;
USE sakila;
--
-- Table structure for table `actor`
--
CREATE TABLE actor (
  actor_id SMALLINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  first_name VARCHAR(45) NOT NULL,
  last_name VARCHAR(45) NOT NULL,
  last_update TIMESTAMP NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  active BOOLEAN NOT NULL DEFAULT TRUE,
  PRIMARY KEY  (actor_id),
  KEY idx_actor_last_name (last_name)
)ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

Conversion

The following commands produced the output valid for a MySQL 4.0 database.


$ dos2unix sakila-schema-0.2.sql
$ cat sakila-schema-0.2.sql | sed -f mysql5to4.sed >sakila-schema-0.2.mysql4


NOTE: These commands are Linux Commands. There are probably Windows compatible commands however without Windows around to test this, I’m not going to offer any advice here. Anybody with any experience here please advise.
If you don’t have Linux, then get it. Sound to hard, well start with a Live CD, for example Knoppix or Ubuntu. These will allow you to boot of CD and it will never affect your Windows machine. If you don’t have broadband or a CD Burner, look at buying a computer magazine. You will find quite regularly options or Live CD’s. Of if you can’t afford that, Ubuntu – ShipIt will ship you the CD for free.
Even better then this, you can now use VMWare Player and have a working Linux environment running in parallel with your Windows at the same time, and it will not affect Windows in any way. You just need the VMWare Player, then a suitable Virtual machine. If there is a single person with an excuse why they can’t experiment with Linux, your not embracing Open Source. Start today, start right now, I’ve given you the links.

Results

DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS sakila;
CREATE DATABASE sakila;
USE sakila;
--
-- Table structure for table `actor`
--
CREATE TABLE actor (
  actor_id SMALLINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  first_name VARCHAR(45) NOT NULL,
  last_name VARCHAR(45) NOT NULL,
  last_update TIMESTAMP NOT NULL,
  active TINYINT NOT NULL DEFAULT TRUE,
  PRIMARY KEY  (actor_id),
  KEY idx_actor_last_name (last_name)
)TYPE=InnoDB;

The Code

Ops, almost forgot the important bit. Note, the syntax in this file is specific, characters and spaces are significant. My advice if you have no idea about ex regular expresssions and syntax, don’t touch.

The contents of mysql5to4.sed

s/CREATE SCHEMA/CREATE DATABASE/
s/DROP SCHEMA/DROP DATABASE/
s/ DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;$/;/
s/ENGINE=/TYPE=/
s/ ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP//
s/ DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP//
s/BOOL /TINYINT /
s/BOOLEAN /TINYINT /
/^DELIMITER/d


Further Work

• These workarounds work on a generated mysqldump file. For example, I bank on implied standards of UPPERCASE in the syntax of commands.
• I don’t cater for situations where DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP is defined on a TIMESTAMP column which is not the first listed in the database table. This could be catered for with some more shell scripting with awk (More about awk 1, 2, 3)
• I don’t cater for syntax situations not currently described in the Sakila Sample Database.
• For now, I’ve manually removed the TRIGGERS, VIEWS, PROCEDURES and FUNCTIONS, however there would be good success via shell scripting to also archieve this.

MySQL Alternative

Morgan provided a suitable syntax for mysqldump in his Compatibility between MySQL Versions article, however I found this not to work completely successful. Here are my findings.

Syntax


mysqldump --compatible=name


Example

Using 5.1.4-alpha-max under Linux (not glib23)

$ mysqldump -P3307 -hlocalhost.localdomain -uroot -d --compatible=mysql40 sakila


The resultant file had the following lines, I’ve just cut and paste to show issues.
Using 4.0.13-standard.


mysql> DELIMITER ;;
ERROR 1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'DELIMITER' at line 1


Using 4.1.10a-standard

mysql> DELIMITER ;
ERROR:
DELIMITER must be followed by a 'delimiter' character or string


This invalid handling of DELIMITER has a downstream affect when it gets to triggers.

mysql> /*!50003 CREATE TRIGGER `ins_film` AFTER INSERT ON `film` FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
-> INSERT INTO film_text (film_id, title, description)
-> VALUES (new.film_id, new.title, new.description);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> END */;;
ERROR 1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'END */' at line 1


I Need to get around to checking the Bug Database to see if these need to be logged.